“When I was using HDD on my old PC, I used to defragment it several times in a month. Two months back, I got a Windows 10 Laptop with 128 GB SSD. Now, I am a little bit confused about whether my new PC should be defragmented or not. Some folks are saying like SSDs are not require to defragment (Well, I don’t know its reason). Give me suggestions on this.”

This was a question I recently found in a Windows 10 forum. I think the question is still unanswered.

I don’t understand why these SSDs are creating that sort of a confusion. Apart from a TRIM feature, I couldn’t find any functional difference between an SSD and an HDD- at least, not in a performance perspective.

Also, came to hear a rumor “It is quite a bad idea to defragment an SSD drive” from many people. Maybe this thought came from the fact, SSDs can’t survive long once they have reached a certain number of read/write cycles.

There was a time when hard disks were supposed to defragment regularly to maintain PC performance. During those periods, availability of SSDs was less or limited as a data storage medium.

Today, most of us are using modern operating systems like Windows 10. If we buy a branded Windows 10 PC in these days, it is more likely to include an SSD instead of an HDD. Better access time, less power usage, lack of noise, and anything else an SSD possess as compared to an HDD, there’s one important thing need to consider: maintenance, even it required only occasionally.

How Windows 10 Helps to Optimize SSDs?

One of the coolest features of Windows 10 is, it treats different storage mediums differently while performing disk “Optimization” (commonly used in Windows 10 – for defragmentation).

Windows 10 Identifies your Storage Type

You may be using an HDD, SSD or whatever else, Windows 10’s disk defragmenter detects it type. Hence, the scheduling and optimization it suggests for an SSD drive will be different from that of an HDD. You don’t have to worry about even on its TRIM feature. (of course, after analyzing an SSD drive, it’ll trim it)

Automatic Disk Optimization

In Windows 10, you don’t have to go to Drive Optimizer every day for checking fragmentation status. Just confirm that all your drives are 0% fragmented by default. Automatically, Windows 10 will schedule to optimize and fragment your drives in a weekly basis.

Optimizing SSD Performance on Windows 10 PC was last modified: May 9th, 2016 by John Harris